Area training center caters to high school athletes

Scott Moody isn't afraid to show off his best athletes. Ask the founder and CEO of Overland Park's Centers for Athletic Performance to brag about his program's greatest success stories, however, and one doesn't get the expected list of all-league, all-state and all-Americans that have at one time trained in his gym.

"You look at someone like Ashley Kimes, who played volleyball at Blue Valley North, then went to Syracuse," Moody said. "She's now the lead for a biomechanical research firm in Los Angeles and she's developing new ankle braces for volleyball players.

"You take someone like that, and I say that's one of the most successful clients we've had. It's not necessarily what they do on field, but what they can take on for the rest of their life and what we can do to help them."

That's one of the first things Moody points out when talking about his bustling workout center, which focuses on training high school athletes. Kids and parents sign up for his classes because they want better results on the court or in the field, but everything off of it is important as well.

That starts with confidence, he said.

"The main focus, No. 1, is to promote confidence in the individual, so that when they walk out of here, they feel good about themselves," Moody said. "If they feel good about themselves, they're going to come back. If they come back, we start to get them to move a little better. If they move a little better, they feel more confident in high speed movement when they go to practice. If they feel more confident there, they start to practice harder, so they start to get better and they get noticed."

Moody builds high school athletes, and he takes pride in his creations, both his bustling workout center and those athletes that go on to success on and off the field. He crafts some of the area's finest in his gym, building up their confidence and refining their quickness, adding to their speed and increasing their strength.

He monitors their progress and encourages them to go fur ther. He tailors their workouts to their weaknesses, their sport, their age and their desires.

Moody said his average client is a 14-year-old volleyball player, but the center offers support for all sports. When he said all sports, he meant it: he's helped everything from synchronized swimmers to football players.

"Our program is designed to break everything down into age, sport, level and gender specific classes," he said.

The classes, two 90-minute sessions per week, cost between $350 and $400 for three months. They also include one hourlong conditioning session during the week, and one hour of individual training every week.

Moody, who played football at Louisiana Tech, got into the business first as a strength coach.

"I was seeing all the things I missed out on," he said of his days on the college football field. "I was playing against guys from Florida and Texas who had much more experience the football field than I did. I realized there were a lot of things I hadn't been shown that would have helped my development.

"I started seeing there was a definite need for this."

He tried to be a personal trainer, but didn't like working with only one person at a time. Next, he tried working with athletes rehabilitating from injuries.

"I worked in rehab for three years, but I hated the fact that you never got to see the kids past the time the insurance started to reimburse them," he said. "Right when you're getting into the fun stuff, you had to cut them loose."

Finally he started CAP, locating it on the top floor of the Pepsi Midwest Ice and Fitness Center at 135th Street and Quivira in Overland Park. Soon, that won't even be enough. Moody spent Tuesday morning working with soccer players. He quickly left before 11 a.m., however, on his way to a series of meetings that would fill up his day, all concerning a new 35,000 square foot training center he's about to build next door.